Why Aren't We Talking About EXPANDING Social Security and Medicare?

Why Aren't We Talking About EXPANDING Social Security and Medicare?

by Troubadour

There has been a lot of rhetoric around fiscal talks in Washington that "everything is on the table," but as far as the media coverage of these talks is concerned, that hasn't even been remotely true - barely a fraction of the available options are reportedly being discussed, and ALL of them are basically conservative: All of them revolve around merely allowing current tax law to take its course vs. instituting suicidal cuts to the safety nets that underpin our nation's economy.

Where is the discussion of raising the top tax rates not by the mere 2-3% that would follow the expiration of Bush tax cuts for this bracket, but by 4%, 5%, 10%, and so on? Where is the discussion of reprioritizing America's federal budget toward actually serving its citizens and away from the wasteful culture of corporate subsidies and Pentagon corruption that now practically bury our economy? And where is the discussion of reducing the age of eligibility of Social Security and/or Medicare? Where is the discussion of increasing benefits for these programs?

There can be no "bargain" while the debate consists entirely of conservative viewpoints arguing with the radical right, and certainly not while Democrats are content not to rock the boat in such an obviously illegitimate and ill-advised state of affairs. Nor is it acceptable to just passively go along with a corrupt, propagandized media that grants sole legitimacy to the values and interests of the wealthy, pretending as if the only options on the table are to cut a little or cut a lot. Not only are those not the only options, those aren't even rational options under the circumstances, and Nobel laureate economists have lined up miles deep to tell us so.

Corporate profits and the wealth of the wealthy are not the reasons we have an economy, and are certainly not the definition of economy: They are luxuries, unlike education, transportation, communications, law enforcement, environmental protection, healthcare programs of every stripe, and Social Security - all things that conservatives are insisting need to be cut in order to facilitate the continued explosion of the former. This is literally an attempt by a vanishingly small group of people to turn an entire national economy and its government into their private property and everyone else into second-class citizens completely dependent on their voluntary largesse to even survive. That's insane and anti-American, and I will not stand for it.

As far as I'm concerned, the "discussion" has not even begun until these basic facts are acknowledged and we can begin debating the right question: By how much we raise top income and capital gains taxes, and by how much we expand Medicare, Social Security, and other economy-promoting programs. Negative numbers on either subject are not under legitimate discussion here. To whatever extent there is any "waste, fraud, and abuse" left to remove from these programs - probably about the same amount as the blood you can squeeze from a stone - all of the savings must remain in those programs rather than lightening the largely fictional tax "burdens" of those who have never and will never actually be burdened by them.

The Rebuild America Act therefore replaces the Social Security COLA formula with one that better accounts for cost inflation in the products and services that older workers pay for. It raises benefits across the board. And it pays for these improvements and addresses the program’s long-term revenue shortfall by “scrapping the cap” – eliminating the loophole that shelters incomes above $110,100 from Social security taxes.

20. Generous as compared to what?

I was against part D too but not because seniors didn't need help with drug costs but because it is a give away to the pharmaceutical industry that allows them to plunder the treasury on inflated price points.

35. Generous? Wow.

The average recipient gets maybe $1000 a month, and that's all the income many elderly have. Then they have Medicare premiums & sometimes co-pays. Try making it on about $800 a month for everything & get back to me on "generous."

Better yet, check out what ordinary Canadians get in the form of government-sponsored retirements. I have some cousins in Saskatchewan who are doing very well after retiring from ordinary jobs.

36. You're wasting your time imo.

43. After putting into the system for 30 years, my disabled roommate gets $811 SSDI

and $17 in food stamps! When she was working she made up to $50K a year, although she was making less when she became disabled. Yes, if the average recipient gets $1000, that means half of them get less, sometimes a lot less. If they are going to make cuts to Social Security, my question is, WHERE? There's just not any fat to cut.

46. wow! My lazy good for nothing brother

who spent most of his life in a drug addicted haze and probably didn't work a total of 4 years in his entire life got declared disabled at the age of 50. He is getting 950 per month--but no food stamps.

44. Benefits should NEVER be cut. Never. Benefits should be increased.

The SS fund has a two trillion dollar surplus and it will double by the year 2023 even if the economy and employment rates stay as they are now.

This fund is separate from the Federal Budget so money going out from that fund has nothing to do with the Fed. Budget.

To increase benefits now, would stimulate the economy, it would be a stimulus that the people themselves already paid for and it would not come from the Federal Budget.

People paid into this fund. The morons in our Government who borrowed from to pay for the Bush tax cuts and their insane useless, wars for profit, had no business doing so. They lied about the wars and the cost, they lied about the Bush cuts which cost this country 2 trillion dollars. WE had to pay that Welfare check also.

The only reform Medicare needs is to lower the eligibility age, remove any middlemen and let the Government run it, as they successfully ran medicaid until the private corps got involved there also, raising the overhead for profit.

Medicare for all paid for the way every other civilized country pays for theirs.

But don't even think about cutting benefits. That money belongs to the people and no member of Congress, or unelected moron like Alan Simpson, or greedy lying Corporation has any right to touch that fund other than to make sure it goes to the people who own it.

11. good article

12. If you want to stimulate the economy

expanding either of these programs would certainly help do that. The 1% seem so short sighted. They stand to benefit more from a healthy vibrant economy (at least in terms of dollars) and yet their only concern is short term tax relief. Medicare for all would bring a lot of healthy people and their money into the system. Talk about your economic stimulus. Business would have a lighter burden and individuals would mostly spend the extra money they didn't have to pay the private blood sucking insurance companies. If they want to cut something, try the lard ass Defense Dept. with all their corrupt contractors (war profiteers). Anybody who votes to shortchange old and sick people, just so the rich can horde another sliver of cash, can FOAD.

17. for the U.S. to meet the standards of modern western democracy it would have to expand a great deal

It is is kind of ridiculous that this is not a part of mainstream discussion. Within the lifetime of many of us - expanding such programs was supported by both parties including the vast majority of mainstream Republicans. How did our political economy and our fundamental morality ever fall so low?

23. Because we have no representatives in DC

Big Insurance pays for representation, we have none. And the president is an appeasing right-wing coward whose main goal is to not get impeached, and so he adopts Republican position on most issues, hoping that Hate Radio and Fox "News" will leave him alone.

28. Ironically, Edmund Burke criticized the National Assembly in France

because the first cash cows they went after in financing their new government were the social service organizations of the church.
Who suffered for all this new "freedom"? The poor, of course.
The conservative business/political class of this country is no different. They want money, and the first place they'll go to get it is the social service apparatus of the government.
1789-- 2012--- no difference.
The Wall Street crowd are the New Jacobins. Instead of bringing the nobility and clergy to the guillotine, they're sacrificing the lives and well-being of the impoverished.

27. The reasons an expansion of these programs

has not been discussed are simple--
1. political cowardice
2. selfishness and greed
3. social rigidity and stupidity
4. a refusal to define sustenance as a human right
5. the dialogue of the deserving versus the undeserving in need
6. sheer stubborn cruelty

Stop buying the aluminum siding and mouthwash the conservatives are substituting for genuine thoughtful policy.
We are, deservedly, the laughingstock of the rest of the world because of our refusal to look after our own.
This is a massively self-deceived country with a government that reflects the worst of the self-deceptions.

29. We let corporations and the right dictate what we talk about

Seriously, I'm tired of Democrats and other Liberals playing ball on the Right Wing / corporations field, where they get to dictate what subjects we talk about and what aspects of them do we talk about. For instance, we let them focus the conversation on cutting the deficit, and we talk about different ways to cut the deficit rather than even if we should pay much attention to the issue at all (was there a whole stink about the deficit back in the Bush years) or if we should care more about stimulating the economy (so revenue would be raised) rather than focus on cutting spending. As a result, they are able to put Democrats on the defensive and pressure them to "shoot Santa" (according to Jude Wanniski's theory of keeping Democrats from giving "gifts" to the people.) Another example is that we let them get away with branding big corporations as "job creators" thus making it that we can't upset the job creators otherwise we won't have more jobs, thus we are beholden to them instead of focusing attention on regulating corporations.

Who said that Republicans and the rest of the Right Wing should dictate the conversation all the time?

People didn't buy it during the 2012 campaign because Democrats successfully presented the facts. All it takes is a sustained effort to educate the public about the facts in contrast to the lies, which cannot trump the truth.